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Amazon's Kindle Voyage May Be Over (cnet.com)
Amazon's Kindle e-reader family seems to have lost a member along the way, with the disappearance of the Voyage from its Kindle Family listing. From a report: The site now lists just three models in its lineup of eight configurations, the Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Oasis. Good e-Reader first noticed this a few weeks back, saying the Voyage seems to have vanished in July. In years past when Amazon has refreshed its Kindle e-readers and Fire tablets, it has done it in the summer or fall. The high-end Oasis was last updated in October 2017, but the most recent midline Paperwhite last saw changes in 2015, and the basic Kindle in 2016. Chances are one or both of the older models will receive an update in the near future.
Since they started adding ads to the home screen (Even the one without special offers), these were no longer worth buying.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
because it works to read books in any font size I want with old eyes that have trouble with paper books.
I can read my kindle books on other devices too if I wanted. Like in browser.
The DRM doesn't even matter in this case, it's just an appliance. if amazon went away the kindle still works too.
Been using it for 8 years with no issue.
i'm just hoping my DX doesn't ever die, why they stopped the larger form factor reader is beyond me. 6 years and counting, the battery is showing signs of stress, but still usable =/
I'd want an e-ink or split-screen e-ink/OLED laptop, frankly. It could be an e-reader and a general-purpose computing device. With the e-ink display, it could have absurd battery life (days to weeks).
Removal of Amazon DRM is trivial in Calibre and you don't need to use DRM ebooks in the first place.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
mine is the 2012 model... battery still good
the naysayers might point to the "Animal Farm" book Amazon retracted when the source company didn't really have rights to it.... but good grief
There are 48.5 million books available for kindle. 1 out of 48.5 million had that problem and so autists go full on Richard Stallman pulpit pounding? Pfffftttt.
The paper versions didn't go away, I could read those with a magnifying glass if the day comes all kindles die. But Kindle is convenient, it works, it never failed me.
Besides, the naysayers are hypocrites, their PC have all kinds of embedded DRM BLOBS that no one knows what the heck they do. There is no totally open system.
But what is Amazon doing with its R&D team?
If you flag it as good enough and the product is done. Then your R&D team will either be fired or moved onto a different product all together. Risking having your product become outdated, and not having the resources to ramp up and catch up.
Just like phones last decade. Flip Phones, reached what a Flip Phone can do. Smart Phones were dominated by black berry, and each update to blackberry wasn't that big of a deal.
Apple iPhone concept put shock into these companies. Causing them 2 years to rework and revamp their product line, because there was minimal R&D because a phone was a phone, and all was done was change the style.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I can only imagine you've never used an e-ink ebook reader. You just cannot compare the experience of the paperwhite e-ink reader to a tablet, both for reading and living with it otherwise. Charging your kindle once a month and being able to read it outdoors as easily as a physical book, you just can't get that with a "full-blown tablet".
Squash
Yup. The Kindle Paperwhite is a superior device. Read anywhere, never worry about battery life, and a pleasant & low distraction UI. Just barely pocket size. So it is easily carried without the display being too tiny. Ability to buy obscure books almost instantly if I see an interesting reference.
Amazon probably makes a lot more ebook sales on Kindle than anywhere else. I can't imagine buying an ebook to read on the laptop - I'll find a free copy somewhere. But that requires time & effort. If I can get a properly formatted version on the Kindle with near zero effort, and the price is right, they've got a sale.
Even tho it's just a fucking database entry saying I'm allowed to read the damned book.
They tend to be considerably lighter. More importantly they are far easier on the eyes than most tablets due to not having a backlight.
I find that so long as I adjust the display brightness according to the ambient light, a TFT tablet is plenty easy on the eyes. Meanwhile, e-Ink either requires an external light, or has some oddly-colored backlight, and/or provides patchy illumination. TFTs have none of these problems. I used my e-Ink reader so little that two batteries died for lack of proper usage cycles.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I was shopping for a replacement for my long in the tooth and increasingly flaky Fire. I pretty much only used it for reading library books I checked out online. When I compared the feature set of Paperwhite versus Voyage it was truly difficult to come up with anything that made the Voyage worth the extra money. Screen resolution was the same, both had backlights for night reading, both were about the same size, both were about the same weight. Battery life was pretty similar. The Voyage had a bit of an edge on the storage side, but since I only ever store a couple books on the thing it's not a big deal. Finding a refurbished Paperwhite for short money sealed the deal in favor of the Paperwhite.
My only complaint with the Paperwhite is that there isn't a way to access the Overdrive/Libby system from the device itself. Other than that I really enjoy having a device without the ability to browse the web in any meaningful way with very long battery life. Some might say "well, a book can do that", but if it's outside my library's hours, it's hard to go pick one up!
It was both in the most infamous incident
Back in 2015 I purchased a Voyage and is still a trusted companion that gave me hours and hours of reading. I have it always close to me and I try to sneak in a read whenever I can.
If this news is indeed true, the sad part is the PagePress controls, which I love and are very useful to me; the Voyage is the only model to offer them. With its haptic feedback, it felt natural and speedy to me. I was certain it was a win, UX-wise, but looks like I was wrong.
Besides that, it was obvious that the Voyage would be a dud. The price was too high, Amazon did almost no rebates of the price, so the result was clear: it didn't sell.
It also shared almost all the shortcomings of other models in the Kindle lineup: poor battery life (with the possible exception of the Oasis), awful font choices (why invest $$ in an e-reader when you are going to read your books with an ugly, utilitarian font such as Bookerly with no better default options and no chance of supplying your own?), and lack of a case (again, save the Oasis).
I hope they soon lauch something with PagePress and with other drawbacks of the Kindle e-ink lineup removed.
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."